Here’s a puzzle to think about before you go to sleep tonight. Who are you, who experiences dreams? And who are you, who WRITES dreams? Who’s in charge of your inner world when you’re asleep?

I had a dream the other night that has me pondering those questions.

I was talking to a group of people and one of them said, “Did you know that you’re God?”

“No I’m not,” I said, because I didn’t believe it and the idea made me uncomfortable.

But then I began to wonder, was I God to these people? Where did they come from? It was my dream wasn’t it? At that point I was in a lucid dream, on a knife’s edge between sleep and the waking world.

I thought, “reality is emanating from me.” I free-associated a few important-sounding but meaningless phrases. “Shocking blue paisley.” “Reality is in superposition.” “The structure of the world is the skeleton of the dream.” “Geometry geography.” “Perspective and personality.”

I remembered a previous lucid dream where I was in the kitchen of my childhood home looking at a scarab and noticed ice cubes in the toaster, letting me know I was free to walk around a bit.

I thought, there’s proof. I’m not God even in my dreams, because even in a lucid dream, where I’m free to walk around, I still don’t make the environment. It would not occur to me to put ice cubes in the toaster.

Oh and, after a little Googling, it seems that my dream people are courtesy of Morpheus and the ice cubes in the toaster were apparently Phantasos‘ idea.